We stayed overnight in Burra in a historic miners
cottage. The cottages are set in long
rows around a square and had a separate bedroom, lounge, kitchen and
bathroom. They were certainly unique but
lacked in some of the more modern day necessities – there was one power point
in the bedroom (accommodating the queen bed and a single bed), none in the
lounge, and one in the kitchen powering the small fridge, the small hot plate,
jug, and toaster. This provided a challenge
to run the one heater which the cord allowed only to be used in the bedroom,
and power up i-phones, i-pads, i-pods etc.
A lesson in how life used to be especially when none of the boys knew
how to turn on the lights using a pull cord!
Tim and Jake slept in the lounge in which we were able to light a small
open fire but typical of an old style fire, most of the heat went up the
chimney. Fortunately it wasn’t too cold
overnight and we all slept well.
This morning we explored the town a little – the houses and
buildings were all built out of light coloured old stone bricks. The younger boys enjoyed playing down by the
river looking for the various native birds and taking lots of photos. We visited the information centre and also
the regional council rooms as we wanted to see the fossil display – the fossils
of ancient creatures were found east of Burra and provided a history very
different to today.
On the way out of town we stopped off at a lookout to see
the copper mine that operated in the area until the late 1800s – the levels of
the mine could be easily seen with the various tall buildings high on the hill
above.
We continued on and our first stop was at the site of a wind
farm – there are four wind farms in South Australia which provide 20% of the
state’s electricity. There was a blade
of a windmill on display and we were all amazed at how big it was – it was 44
metres long. The wind farm we saw
provided electricity to some 40,000 homes.
We stopped off at Peterborough for lunch – cooked cheese and
tomato toasted sandwiches using the small gas cooker at the rest area in the
middle of town. There were at least ten
caravans parked up at the same time – reminders to us of our travels over the
last couple of years. Obviously most of
these people were heading to the Flinders Ranges.
 |
| Peterborough is a town in the mid north of South Australia, in wheat country, just off the Barrier Highway. At the 2006 census, Peterborough had a population of 1,689 |
We continued on to Hawker at the south end of the Flinders
Ranges and then taking the road to the west of the Ranges we travelled north
initially to Parachilna. Unfortunately
time does not allow us to explore the Flinders Ranges. We had initially planned to stop overnight at
Parachilna but a vote was taken to continue another sixty kilometres to Leigh
Creek to reduce the travel tomorrow. We
have driven through some pretty arid sheep farming land today and we have been
surprised to see the number little lambs.
The ruins of many old cottages are also scattered along the highway
telling stories of life in the area.
The landscape is now much more scrubby with only the
occasional flock of sheep – Tim has been on kangaroo patrol as he is very keen
to see a mob of wild kangaroo but as yet has only seen a couple. We continue to see quite a few emu and the
odd hawk. Other than that the only
evidence of wildlife has been the road kill which the boys are quick to point
out.
We are now staying at Leigh Creek which is 66 kilometres
north of Parachilna. South Australia
generates about 40% of its electricity from coal mined at Leigh Creek –
apparently almost daily the mine fills a 2.8 kilometre long train with nearly
10,000 tonnes of coal bound for Port Augusta.
With a bit of luck we just might see the train tomorrow. Tonight we have stayed in a cabin but the
weather is certainly getting warmer so we will tent from tomorrow. We cooked our dinner of hamburgers followed
by crumpets with honey outside on the BBQ’s while the boys played spotlight
with the help of headlamps.
No comments:
Post a Comment